Featured Research

Greatest Technological Research Challenges Of The 21st Century Identified By Expert Panel

Date:

February 19, 2008

Source:

Princeton University, Engineering School

Summary:

A panel of maverick thinkers, convened by the National Academy of Engineering, has identified what they consider to be the greatest technological research challenges facing society in the coming century. Panel member Rob Socolow of Princeton University expands upon the NAE Grand Challenges project and the role that technological innovation plays in a vibrant society.

Share This

A panel of 18 maverick thinkers, convened by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), recently identified what they consider to be the greatest technological research challenges facing society in the coming century.

In the interview below, Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, expands upon the NAE Grand Challenges project and the role that technological innovation plays in a vibrant society. A complete list of the 14 Grand Challenges is provided at the end of this Q&A with Socolow.

What exactly is the National Academy of Engineering's Grand Challenges project?

In some respects we were given a crazy assignment: to identify and rank the greatest engineering challenges that lie ahead in the 21st century.

Ultimately we didn't find it within our intellectual powers to rank these challenges. How do you rank the eradication of poverty versus keeping the planet habitable versus avoiding nuclear war? Instead we came up with broad categories of the challenges that lie ahead and within those categories identified specific initiatives.

What are those broad categories?

The first broad category encompasses environmental wholeness -- the need for humans to take care of our earthly home and to be good stewards of the environmental quality that we depend upon.

The second category was our own wellness -- the medical side of human life.

The third category acknowledges that we have a dark side as human beings ourselves and that our lives have a certain precariousness. We lumped challenges in this category under the word "vulnerability." It would be very nice if we could omit this category and attend only to environmental and medical well-being. But we live on a planet that experiences earthquakes and tsunamis. And we are a species that causes trouble for itself. We have a streak in us as humans that we have to recognize and contend with.

The fourth category we refer to as the joy of living. After you've got health and environmental soundness and you feel protected against the bad side of both human nature and Mother Nature, there is still something else to aspire to -- self-knowledge and enlightenment.

The 20th century brought incredible advances in our understanding of our universe, our solar system, our Earth, our own DNA -- we have so much more of a sense of time and space beyond where our ancestors were 150 years ago. Engineering was the fulcrum that tipped open our world to these discoveries. It will play a similar role in the future, contributing to new understandings of our surroundings, our history, our science, our cultures -- contributing to our sense of what it means to be human.

Why do we need to identify grand challenges for engineering?

In part, this is about communication with the public. Many salaries are paid out of public funds -- for teaching and for research. What is the return on this investment? We need to make sure that people understand how past investments in science and engineering have improved human life. Engineering has delivered many successes: our electrified world, indoor plumbing, air travel -- we take these things for granted but we shouldn't. No doubt there is a down side to, say, the automobile or to electrical power. These engineering successes can end up posing new engineering challenges. Notably, how do we make these innovations work on a finite planet?

Without investments made by previous generations, we would not enjoy the seemingly invisible infrastructure that makes our modern lives possible. It goes without saying that if we don't make similar investments now we will rob future generations of the quality of life that they should enjoy.

The other important motivation for bringing attention to the grand challenges that lie ahead for engineering is that we want to make sure that young people know that engineering is an exciting profession, one that makes a difference to society.

What specific initiatives in the report are most compelling to you personally?

In terms of keeping our planet habitable, I would have to point to the challenges of managing carbon and nitrogen on a planetary scale. Managing carbon -- which is produced when we burn fossil fuels -- by capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide, has gotten a lot of media attention, given the concerns over global warming. It's a challenge my colleagues and I at Princeton have been working on for many years,

Managing nitrogen and avoiding dangerous interference with the nitrogen cycle is an engineering grand challenge that is not so well-known. In the process of fertilizing the planet we are massively increasing the amount of biologically available nitrogen on the planet. So we are not just warming the planet, we are fertilizing the planet. In both cases you are creating ecological change and disturbance. We fertilize the cornfields of Iowa and the nitrogen flows down the Mississippi. There is a region in the Gulf of Mexico where so much fertilization has been deposited that it is a dead zone during certain times of the year. So we have a situation where the ecological system bites back.

Could you say something about specific challenges within the other broad categories?

In the category of health, individualized medicine is paramount. We need to aspire toward a medical model that takes into account the particularities of the whole person, and part of this is an engineering challenge.

In the category of vulnerabilities, we outlined some of the important technological challenges in detecting surreptitious nuclear material and the importance of taking into account the whole fuel cycle when it comes to nuclear energy. We don't want to engineer energy systems that create what might be considered an attractive nuisance -- systems that open up ways for nuclear material to fall into the wrong hands. Also, since we live in an increasingly networked virtual world, cybersecurity is a fundamental engineering challenge.

In terms of "joy of living" the challenge that I find most compelling is individualized learning. New technologies offer extraordinary opportunities for learning to become tailored to personal aptitudes and learning styles.

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry chaired the NAE panel, which released its report in Boston at the national meeting of the American association for the Advancement of Science.

More From ScienceDaily

More Matter & Energy News

Featured Research

Mar. 31, 2015 — Researchers have recorded the first direct observations of the micro-scale mechanisms behind the ability of skin to resist tearing. The results could be applied to the improvement of artificial skin, ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — A year ago, researchers showed that their software endowed the walking robot Hector with a simple form of consciousness. Their new research goes one step further: they have now developed a software ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Landfills can make a profit from all their rotting waste and a new patent explains exactly how to make the most out of the stinky garbage sites. Decomposing trash produces methane, a landfill gas ... full story

Mar. 31, 2015 — Scientists have achieved an unprecedented level of control over defects in liquid crystals that can be engineered for applications in liquid matter photonics. Sitting with a joystick in the comfort ... full story

Mar. 30, 2015 — Neuroscientists are taking inspiration from natural motor control to design new prosthetic devices that can better replace limb function. Researchers have tested a range of brain-controlled devices ... full story

Mar. 30, 2015 — Speaking in public is the top fear for many people. Now, researchers have developed an intelligent user interface for 'smart glasses' that gives real-time feedback to the speaker on volume modulation ... full story

Mar. 30, 2015 — By studying the morphology and physiology of plants with tiny conical "hairs" or microfibers on the surface of their leaves, such as tomatoes, balsam pears and the flowers Berkheya purpea and Lychnis ... full story

Mar. 30, 2015 — In the first study of its kind, scientists quantitatively show that electric vehicles will meet the daily travel needs of drivers longer than commonly assumed. They found that batteries that have ... full story

Mar. 30, 2015 — One researcher has developed a clever solution to gather naturalistic driving data. For several years, she has been using a detailed driving simulator to study how participants respond to ... full story

Bionic Ants Could Be Tomorrow's Factory Workers

Reuters - Innovations Video Online (Mar. 30, 2015) — Industrious 3D printed bionic ants working together could toil in the factories of the future, says German technology company Festo. The robotic insects cooperate and coordinate their actions and movements to achieve a common aim. Amy Pollock reports.
Video provided by Reuters

Related Stories

Oct. 15, 2013 — A newly released report is one of the most comprehensive assessments of national and international evidence regarding the health effects of conducted energy weapons (CEWs) such as stun guns. The ... full story

Mar. 6, 2012 — Specific advances in materials and manufacturing can deliver significant energy, environmental, and economic impacts to U.S. businesses in as soon as two to ten years, according to a new ... full story

July 6, 2011 — The Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health Initiative, led by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases, has identified the top 40 barriers to better ... full story

July 14, 2010 — Now that scientists have learned so much about aging through laboratory studies, it's time to translate those findings into medicines that can benefit our aging population, experts ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.